The Background Behind the Song "He Looked Beyond My Fault and Saw My Need"

YouTube - The Rambos - He Looked Beyond My Fault and Saw My Need

Amazing Grace shall always be my song of praise

For it was grace that brought me liberty

I do not know just why he came to love me so

He Looked Beyond My Fault and Saw My Need

Chorus:

I shall forever lift mine eyes to Calvary

To view the cross where Jesus died for me

How marvelous the grace that caught my falling soul

He Looked Beyond My Fault and Saw My Need

Repeat Chorus:

This is a classic song that was penned by the late Dottie Rambo around 1970. Dottie had a brother named Eddie Luttrell who had cancer and was told he only had weeks to live. Dottie would pray and read the Bible to him by his bedside. She would persuade him to give his heart to Jesus. One day after singing at a concert she visited Eddie and asked him did he give his heart to the Lord. Eddie said the way he lived there's no way God would take him in. He reminded her of his addiction to drugs and his time in jail. Dottie reminded him the Lord left the 99 and went after that one lost sheep.

It was after that visit that she finished composing the song, "He Looked Beyond My Fault and Saw My Need." She previously had started writing a song about the grace of God but was unable to finish it. Now she finally finished the song. One day after singing at a concert in Ohio, she felt persuaded that Eddie gave his heart to the Lord. She visited him and he said he gave his heart to the Lord. He was very weak at his bedside and died shortly thereafter. She sang the song at his funeral and has sung it countless times ever since. Many groups have sung that song over the years. It's a classic that many churchgoing Americans are familiar with today.

There's an interesting story in regards to the tune of "He Looked Beyond My Fault and Saw My Need." Back in the early 60's, Jimmie Davis who was the governor of Louisiana at the time, had attended a concert in which he heard the Happy Goodmans perform. He heard them sing one of Dottie's songs entitled, "There's Nothing My God Can't Do." He enquired about the authorship of the song and the Goodmans told her Dottie Rambo wrote it. Davis contacted Rambo and he arranged for Dottie and her family to meet the governor at the mansion in Louisiana. He had Dottie to perform and as a result he offered her a publishing contract of $3000, which was more money than Dottie had ever made. Over the course of time, Davis had requested that Rambo compose a song to the tune of "Danny Boy", which was widely considered an Irish national anthem written by Frederick Weatherly in 1910. When Dottie finished the song, "He Looked Beyond My Fault and Saw My Need", she set it to the Irish tune of "Danny Boy", a Londonderry Air song. Over the years, Dottie's song has touched countless lives of millions of people. If it wasn't for God's grace, imagine where we would be today. We would be in hell.